Secure Immaturity

Well, I started watching Transformers Revenge of the Fallen at 7 pm yesterday and it just got over with five seconds ago clocking in at an impressive 632 minutes. Look, I don’t want to start on a bad foot here. I am not a Michael Bay hater. When it comes to bahing with all the sheep, I tend to ignore waves of popular hysteria and negative hysteria together. I’m sorry. . .when I plug into a Michael Bay film I turn my brain off and enjoy myself. You’d be lying right to my face if you said you didn’t enjoy, just a little, Armageddon or Bad Boys (I and II) or elements of Pearl Harbor. Michael Bay takes the visual parts of the medium and makes sweet sweet love to your eyes.

So I won’t say Transformer Revenge of the Fallen is a bad flick because he directed it. I’ll say it’s a bad flick because a demon from hell came to this earth to plague us with this drivel. I think Michael Bay is just the husk the demon got it’s paws on and forced, through telepathic rape, to direct it. So I won’t blame him. Transformers, the first film in the franchise, was the perfect example of a 2.5 star film: great images, a few boredom crushing action set pieces, a hot chick but nothing completely memorable or intelligent. It was entertainment at its very least. Michael Bay directed that and I was fine with it.

But Transformers Revenge of the Fallen is one of those things that shouldn’t happen. Since the budget of the film approached the $200 million mark there should be something, something, to please the eye or interest the soul. Money can’t buy intelligence (which I’ve been trying to tell my poor parents who paid for that entirely useless English degree I got) but it sure can buy eye candy. If Transformers was stupid, it was fun stupid. Transformers Revenge of the Fallen is a chore from beginning to end. I got welts on my hand from pounding my head at fierce and frequent intervals. Transformers Revenge of the Fallen is not the worst film ever made but it sure is a waste of time. I simply got up after watching the film and said, ‘well, that was. . .something’. The film made me almost speechless and not in the good way.

See, Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) is going to college and. . .you know what, fuck it. I’ll just sum it up more easily: Decepticons are coming to Earth to get Energon, found a weapon that can blow up the sun, which they want to use because. . .they are motiveless-evil doofs. . .I guess. . .and the autobots are primed (no pun intended. . .see. . .Optimus. . .Prime. . .ahem) to stop them. That’s it. Humans make cameos as annoying Mexican, New Yorker and Natasha-Henstridge-Tongue-As-Weapons stereotypes. There are more black robots in the movie then actual black people.

A lot of stuff blows up (didn’t see that coming did you), there are loose tie-in plot threads from the first plotless movie (making this movie twice as plotless) and stuff blows up. More stuff blows up also and the African American culture gets pushed back to the black-face days of vaudeville. There are toaster transformers, old huffy Brit Transformers and Transformers who look like those weird klicking creatures from Star Wars Episode II who are voiced by Worf’s brother. Yes, you say, how can they pack this all in fourteen hours of movie! They would need at least a sequel. . .

Transformers Revenge of the Fallen didn’t hurt because of the inane script, the horrendous stereotypes or the non-stop visual assault (those were, how shall we say, the foreplay before the prison rape) but for the fact that the entire thing was boring. With the exception of one scene where the butchered amalgamation of my boyhood hero Optimus Prime beats some Decepticon ass for ten minutes, I found NOTHING in the film exciting or stimulating. I couldn’t actually believe some of the things that were happening on screen before my eyes. And some of that is because I couldn’t actually tell what was going on due to excellent visual effects that portray robots-in-disguise so effectively that I can’t tell they are actually robots. I thought a steel girder was fighting a tractor at one point.

On that note, Megan Fox, believes this if you dare, was the best actor in this movie. I found her charming and, though entirely useless to anything but 15 year old boys ocular cavities, didn’t do a bad job. Shia LeBeouf’s schtick is getting annoying and I felt sorry for the kid anytime he had visions of the odd san scrit language popping into his head. Poor kid looked like he was having a seizure. I’d be too if I got to kiss Megan Fox all day, take after take, but this was part of the quote-unquote plot. Jon Turturro has officially lost all my respect and Jon Voight. . .well. . .he wasn’t in this but I should punch him just for being in the first one. Tyrese and Josh Hummel-Cake were in this as well. It’s sad it took me until half way through the second movie to find out their names! They again play an ancillary role in the whole thing and blow stuff up.

My final gripe is that they didn’t drop Agent Smith and get Frank Fucking Welker to do the voice of Megatron. Why did we need him for a role that literally requires a few cheesy snarls? Welker did about six hundred voices in this movie. . .why not the role he is most known for. That’s got to chap his ass a tiny bit. And the dude playing Starscream needs to be shot. . .what the hell kind of voice was that! I want Cobra Commander style whines and Machiavellian schemes! The Fallen, on the other hand, was voice-cast perfectly: Tony Todd is the man! So is Peter Cullen whose voice talents at least keep me involved thanks to nostalgic muscle memory.

In the case of this bloated franchise, which, when played back to back, play longer then the entire Godfather trilogy, one shall stand and one shall fall. The first one can at least be serviceable. This one has Fallen. . .into my trash bin. Get it. Subtle. . .I know. Anyways. . .

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